Get Your War On

2001

Date: October 2001 · Place: mnftiu.cc, hosted New York · Figures: David Rees, cartoonist · Rolling Stone, syndicator · Tags: Webcomic, Politics, Clip-art 01. Office Clipart Goes to Afghanistan Three weeks after 9/11, David Rees launches Get Your War On at mnftiu.cc. The format: 1980s Print Shop clip-art office workers on the phone, ranting in profane verbatim about the war on terror. No drawing, no animation, just panels of identical stock figures cursing. Rees is a temp at a paralegal firm in Brooklyn. The strip is what he writes when he should be working. The aesthetic flatness is the point: the bureaucratic dread of the post-9/11 office sounds exactly like clip-art people would sound. 02. The First Political Webcomic Anyone Forwards Rolling Stone picks it up in 2002. A book follows. Rees donates proceeds to landmine clearance in Afghanistan. The comic outlasts the war it was named for, running through the Iraq invasion and into the Obama years. Get Your War On invents the modern political webcomic: zero artistic skill required, voice is everything, dread is the punchline. Every Existential Comics and Reductress descendant routes through it. Sources • David Rees, 'Get Your War On' (Soft Skull Press, 2002) • Rolling Stone, 'Get Your War On' archive 2002-2008 • The Believer, 'David Rees interview' (April 2008)